


This Cesspool City

by azenki



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Found Family, M/M, and then finds out that the cute cashier burns down government buildings in his spare time, everyone also says acab, everyone says 'eat the rich' except the rich, sokka and suki just two eighteen-year-olds parenting their siblings, sokka has a crush on the cute cashier, this should really just be called 'sokka gets progressively more stressed', which is cool
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25646725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azenki/pseuds/azenki
Summary: He was planning to ask him out soon anyway. But ifZukoasks him out, well...Sokka really isn’t opposed.“Uh, weird question,” Zuko starts, and Sokka’s heart does a freaking triple axel, “but do you want to join the rebellion?”Does hewhat now?Or: Sokka drinks tea, pays rent, wins Game Night, flirts with a cute guy, and tries to overthrow the government. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Sokka & Suki (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 227





	This Cesspool City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this started out as a writing exercise and ended as a fully-fledged fic. i have no excuses.

The clock reads 3:47 AM, and Suki still isn’t home.

Sokka knows she’s more than capable of taking care of herself, but that doesn’t stop him from worrying. Suki can try and say that she’s helping out at the shelters all she wants, but in their little patchwork family, it’s an open secret that Suki’s part of the rebellion. Which means that when she’s been gone for over ten hours, Sokka’s going to worry. And he’s going to worry _hard._

Katara and Aang are both bundled up on the couch. They’d passed out a few hours ago, around the midnight mark, despite swearing that they’d stay up until Suki came home. Usually, Sokka would’ve carried them to their rooms by now—Toph is already snoring away in the bunk bed she shares with Aang—but he can’t seem to take his eyes off the door. 

He hasn’t felt this jittery since the night Dad went missing. There’s an empty cup of coffee in front of him, a cold pot sitting on the stove, a bowl and chopsticks laid out on the table ready for Suki to use when she comes back. 

She _will_ come back. She has to. 

Sokka checks his phone again. No notifications. No texts, no calls, no nothing. His 2AM message of _Suki where the HELL are you_ is still unread.

He exhales and buries his head in his hands. If Suki’s gone, if she disappears like Dad and Bato did, then Sokka’s—Sokka’s _alone._ He and Suki are the only ones with real jobs, because gods know that the Lower Ring Hospital doesn’t have nearly enough money to properly pay interns like Katara. And Aang and Toph are only _fifteen._ Aang’s got a job stocking shelves at the supermarket, and Sokka knows that Toph sneaks out at night to gamble on shady back-alley fighting matches, but neither of those things will make much of a difference if Suki goes missing.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. They’re already struggling enough as it is without the Dai Li breathing down their necks, and if Suki’s been taken then Sokka _knows_ they’ll be put under surveillance because they live with her, and—

_Click._

He snatches up the knife he’d left sitting on the table. The sound had come from the door, and Sokka doesn’t dare move or breathe or even fucking think as it slowly creaks open—

Suki steps into the apartment, looking tired and stressed but _very much alive._ Sokka throws the knife onto the table and practically launches himself at her, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her so tight he can feel the metal fans hidden beneath her clothes.

“Suki, oh my gods, _Suki—”_ he wheezes out, grasping at her jacket and her hair frantically. The relief is almost too much. When he pulls back to squish Suki’s face between his hands, he realises that his fingers are trembling.

“What the _fuck?”_ he hisses, quiet enough that Katara and Aang don’t wake up. “Where were you? Suki, I was worried _sick!”_

“Sorry,” she says quietly, kicking the door shut behind her and locking it with a turn of the key. “I was at the shelter, and I—”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it,” Sokka snaps, scanning her from head to toe. When he finds no injuries but a bruise on her knuckles, he finally lets himself fully relax. “Come eat your damn dinner and tell me what _actually_ happened.”

Suki’s uncharacteristically quiet as she toes off her shoes and follows him into the kitchen. Sokka doesn’t like it; _he’s_ usually the serious one, not her. He fills up her bowl with egg-fried rice and pops it in the microwave, then turns and frowns at her.

“Spill,” he says, pointing the chopsticks at her. “You’ve never been gone that late. What happened?”

Suki shifts in her seat. She glances out the window conspicuously; they both know that Ba Sing Se is full of cameras, and it’d be foolish to assume that any conversations they have near windows are safe. So she pulls out her phone and types something up instead, then turns it around to show Sokka.

The screen’s set to the message history between him and Suki, and she’s typed out a whole paragraph in the message bar that they both know she won’t send. Sokka takes the phone and squints down at it.

 _Went to a meeting w/ the girls,_ it reads. _Dai li r planning to start evicting refugees from the city._

Sokka’s heart drops. No. No, that can’t— _they’re_ refugees. Almost everyone in Ba Sing Se is a refugee. The only non-refugees in this whole Tui-damned city are those bastards living in the Upper Ring. 

He erases Suki’s message and types up a new one. _What about us?_ he asks. _Will we be evicted? And what took u so long?_

The microwave beeps as he slides the phone back across the counter to Suki. As he takes her rice out, he hears the tap-tap-tap of her nails on the screen.

They make a trade: the rice for the phone. Suki picks up her chopsticks and starts eating as Sokka reads her answer.

 _Stayed out taking down info office,_ it says. _Burned records of refugees in eastern city block. We’re in the danger zone._

Sokka reads that last line three times. It’s only on the third time that it really sinks in, dread dripping down his spine in icy rivulets.

_We’re in the danger zone._

Ba Sing Se is a corrupt cesspool of a city, but it’s still a _city._ It’s somewhere where they can get work, somewhere that hasn’t yet been torn apart completely by the war. If they get evicted…

If they get evicted, they’re doomed. Sokka and Aang would probably be sent to work in the coal mines, and the girls...he doesn’t want to think about what would happen to the girls.

Sokka erases the message and slowly lowers the phone. When he raises his head to meet Suki's eyes, he finds that she's already looking at him. 

The look on her face is all that he needs to know that they’re well and truly fucked.

Suki has always been hopeful. It’s why she joined the rebellion when Sokka didn’t, why she helps out at the shelters, why she kept applying for a job at the dojo until they let her in. Suki’s always been hopeful, but now?

Now, she looks more hopeless than Sokka's ever seen her. He wishes he could say it's a look he's not familiar with.

He can't.  
  


* * *

They agree not to tell the others. It would only stress them out. Still, it’s a little hard to watch Aang and Toph throw bits of egg at each other over the table when Sokka knows that they could be forced to leave the city at any moment.

As he watches over the pot of jook gently bubbling on the stove, Sokka can’t help but think of the three duffel bags currently sitting in his closet. He and Suki had packed them full of clothes and toiletries and long-lasting foods, just in case they end up having to make a quick run for it. 

It's the tensest morning he can remember having in a while. The others pick up on the nervous energy between him and Suki easily enough, and Sokka's half-expecting Katara to start asking questions. 

To his surprise, she doesn't. Instead, she lets herself get shooed out of the apartment with Sokka, as Suki stays behind and promises to escort Aang and Toph to school.

("We don't need an _escort,"_ Toph complains, like she always does. 

"Uh, yes you fucking do," Sokka snaps back, like he always does.)

It's a familiar routine. Sokka walks Katara to the hospital and makes sure that she gets in safe, then turns around and walks nearly the whole way back across the Lower Ring to catch the monorail. He waves his pass at the station guard and prays that no one notices it’s a fake, because they can only afford to have one genuine monorail pass and he’d given it to Suki. He jumps the turnstile—not like he can pay for it, anyway—and gets on the monorail, then catches it all the way to the heart of the Middle Ring. 

It’s a familiar routine, but Sokka’s never felt more out of place. It might be his imagination, but it feels like there are more Dai Li than usual today. It's enough to put him on edge, and he pointedly avoids looking at the graffiti on the monorail that reads _THERE IS WAR IN BA SING SE._ He's packed one of Suki's fans in his laptop bag today, too, just in case, and as he passes two Dai Li agents on the monorail, he could swear it burns through the bag like a brand.

He's got that crawling feeling of being watched. It doesn't go away, not even when he reaches the Middle Ring and starts making his way to work.

Sokka works at the news station. When he tells people that, they usually tend to think that he manages the lights, or that he’s one of the cameramen. 

What Sokka _really_ does is sift through records of the latest events and cobble together a script for the news anchors to read. Then he watches as half of his script is blacked out beyond recognition because it hinted just a bit too much at there being a war outside Ba Sing Se’s walls. Then he runs around like a headless pig-chicken to get all the important people their tea and coffee before they get grumpy and start yelling at everyone else.

So, yeah. He spends his days writing words that ultimately get cut, leaving news reports about things like the latest fashion trend in the Upper Ring. It boils his blood, but it pays well, so he keeps his mouth shut and watches as the news anchors prattle on about diamond thread and gold-coated food. 

When Sokka gets to the studio, everyone’s running around frantically. He weaves through the crush until he finds Yue, his coworker and pretty much only friend at this stupid place. She looks more frazzled than normal, white hair falling out of her impeccable bun.

“Sokka!” She grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him back and forth. “Sokka, we’re dead. We’re so, so dead.”

“Dead how?” He pries her hands off him. “What happened?”

Yue bites her lip. He used to have a crush on her, back when they started working together, and that lip bite had driven him crazy. Now, though, he sees how her lips are chapped and peeling from not drinking enough water, and he wonders how long it’s been since she last had a meal.

“A Dai Li informant office burnt down last night,” she says, and Sokka thinks back to a silent conversation held over a kitchen counter. _Damn it, Suki._ “The only thing it had was records of refugees. The station wants to cover it up, but too many people saw it, and they want to know why it was destroyed." She lowers her voice, glancing around the studio. "Sokka, there are already rumours that it's because the Dai Li are planning something to do with the refugees. How do we turn this into a story where the Dai Li look good?”

Sokka claps her on the shoulder. It’s times like this that he remembers why he got this job in the first place: he’s great at twisting his words. “Simple,” he tells Yue. “‘Suspected criminals burn down city archives to destroy evidence.’ Maybe throw in some words like anarchist, too. Anyway, I gotta run, you know how Daisuke gets if his tea is late—”

“Oh!” Yue shoves a hand in her pocket and pulls out a slip of paper. “Daisuke changed his tea order. He wants it to be from that tea shop two streets over—the Jasmine Dragon, I think?”

“I’m familiar,” Sokka says, taking the paper and staring down at the most specific tea order he’s ever seen. Fuck Daisuke and his Upper Ring tastebuds. “I’ll be back in ten, maybe fifteen if the line is long. Get started on the script?”

Yue gives him a thumbs-up and scurries off to their shared desk. Sokka crumples Daisuke’s stupid order into a little ball and jogs out the studio doors.

The late morning air is sharp and cold. Sokka pulls his jacket tighter around his shoulders and starts power-walking towards the Jasmine Dragon. Daisuke really _is_ a little bitch when his tea is late, and Sokka isn’t in the mood to get his head bitten off.

He nearly walks right past the Jasmine Dragon, but catches himself at the last minute. He swings inside, pushes open the door—oh, they added a little bell that rings when he enters, that’s cute—and finds himself at the end of a sizable line.

Sokka groans to himself. _This_ is why he hates going to the Jasmine Dragon in the mornings. It’s better in the afternoons, but morning lines are a pain in the neck.

Still, Daisuke wants his tea from the Jasmine Dragon specifically, and Sokka is but a puppet for people richer than him to use. So here he is, shuffling at the end of the morning line, cursing Daisuke and Chen and all the other assholes whose shoes he has to kiss daily. He’s still grumbling by the time he reaches the counter, pulling out Daisuke’s dumb order and rattling it off—seriously, who orders tea with _two and a third teaspoons of honey_ —

“Sokka?”

Sokka’s head snaps up at the familiar voice. _“Zuko?”_

He can’t help but grin. He didn’t think that Zuko (AKA his favourite cashier, AKA best tea maker this side of Pohuai Stronghold) worked in the mornings, too. Zuko’s one of the reasons Sokka likes to come to the Jasmine Dragon on his breaks. He’s dry and sarcastic and kind of an asshole, and Sokka knows, like, three things about him—one of which is his name—but he likes to think they’re friends. Kind of. Well, it’s more like Sokka comes in and talks Zuko’s ear off while also drinking the best tea he’s ever tasted, but Zuko’s never told him to fuck off, so.

(And Sokka _knows_ that Zuko’s fully capable of telling people to fuck off, because he did it to Jet. That had been satisfying to watch.)

“What are you doing here? It’s barely even eleven.” Zuko’s brow furrows. Which is cute. Really cute.

Oh, yeah. Zuko’s dry, sarcastic, kind of an asshole, and also cute as fuck. Sokka may or may not have the tiniest crush on him.

“Getting tea for my boss,” Sokka answers, waving a hand. He shows Zuko Daisuke’s order. “Think you can do this for me?”

Zuko’s eye widens. “Wait, your boss is _that_ guy? The one who orders the weirdest fucking teas I’ve ever seen?”

“That’s the one,” Sokka says. “Anyway, I’m already running late, so if you could speed things up a little…?”

“Sure.” Zuko punches in Daisuke’s order, which takes much longer than it should, and Sokka forks over the cash. “You know the drill. Go stand over there, and when your order is ready I’ll yell, ‘Honey tea for dickface’.”

“You’re hilarious,” Sokka deadpans as he moves towards the waiting area. “Absolutely hysterical. I’m splitting my sides over here.”

“Go split them somewhere else, I’m the one who has to clean up tonight,” Zuko says, waving him off and beckoning the next customer forward. Sokka sticks his tongue out at him. He can almost hear Katara telling him, _wow, real mature._

But as much as he wants to stay and flirt with cute cashiers, he really doesn’t have time to. So instead, he grabs Daisuke’s stupid rich-boy honey tea—”Honey tea for Sokka,” Zuko calls, and Sokka winks at him and says, “What, did dickface leave?”—and books it out of the tea shop with one last look thrown over his shoulder. 

He jogs back to the studio, hands Daisuke his tea and gets an earful for being five minutes late, then sits down at his desk with Yue to read over the script. Well, he tries to sit down at his desk with Yue to read over the script. Key word being _tries,_ because there’s someone else already sitting in his spot.

“Sorry, dude, but you gotta budge over,” he says, nudging the Seat Usurper with his foot. “Don’t know if you’re new here, but that’s kind of my—”

The Seat Usurper turns around, and Sokka can _see_ the last chance he had at having a good day go flying out the window. 

_“Jet?”_ he says disbelievingly. The last time he’d seen his little sister’s trash ex-boyfriend, Zuko had been all but chasing him out of the Jasmine Dragon. “What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

Jet smirks. Over his shoulder, Yue looks Sokka dead in the eyes and mouths, ‘he’s an asshole’. 

“Say hello to your newest coworker, Sokka,” Jet says, hopping off his seat and spreading his arms wide like he’s about to give Sokka a hug. He mispronounces Sokka’s name the way he always has—he says it like _soak-a,_ and it takes physical effort for Sokka to keep from punching him in the face.

And then Jet’s words sink in. His newest coworker— _Jet?!  
_ _  
_“Oh, _hell_ no,” Sokka says, shoving Jet aside and dropping into his seat. “No way did Xinwen News hire someone like _you.”_

Xinwen News is—first and foremost, it’s propaganda, but it’s also, like, genuinely professional. The first time Sokka had seen Jet, it’d been because he was secretly tailing Toph on the way to one of her fighting matches to make sure she stayed safe, and Jet had been the champion of the night. Jet is the complete opposite of professional, and Sokka can’t see how he ever got hired.

Jet shrugs. He’s still got that stupid wheat stalk in his mouth. He doesn’t think it actually makes him look cool, does he? “You’d be surprised how high up you can get by knowing the right people. I know a guy who knows a guy who knows—what’s his name? The director, with the stupid suit.”

Sokka follows his gaze across the studio. When he sees who Jet’s talking about, he slaps a hand to his forehead and silently curses everything wrong with the world.

Jet snaps his fingers. “Daisuke! Right, right. So, I got hired, and here I am, working with my good pal Sokka.” He claps his hand on Sokka’s shoulder, and Sokka resists the urge to snap his fingers one-by-one. “And, of course, this lovely lady over here.” He winks at Yue, who gives him a flatly uninterested look and turns back to her laptop.

Sokka grits his teeth. “Just stay out of my way,” he grumbles, opening up his own laptop. “And _don’t mess anything up.”_

As it turns out, Sokka really doesn’t need to worry about Jet messing up their scripts. He seems more interested in listening to the news that comes in than writing about it, which Sokka can definitely roll with. He doesn’t need Jet’s agenda pushing its way into his and Yue’s script; he vaguely remembers Jet once flat-out _begging_ a sixteen-year-old Katara to go blow up a factory with him, and he knows that if Jet was allowed to run wild the Dai Li would be all over them in an instant. Sokka’s already stressed enough as it is; he spends the better half of his day with one eye on his phone, expecting Suki to call him and tell him they’ve been evicted at any moment. So, when Jet stays out of his way and his phone stays as silent as ever, he lets out what feels like the biggest sigh of relief in his life.

But even though he hasn't been evicted (yet), that doesn't make his job easier. The hardest part of his day is always when he has to sit down and go through the missing persons reports, because everyone in the Lower Ring knows exactly what happened to them—they were taken by the Dai Li.

If Sokka had his way, he'd cram the anchors' scripts full of the things he has to read and listen to every day. Like now, for instance, because the report Sokka's reading is...horrible. A Fire Nation refugee's been murdered by an Earth Kingdom villager, and it's not hard to come up with the motive behind the killing.

But, of course, the story never makes it to air. After all, Sokka thinks bitterly, there's no war in Ba Sing Se.

* * *

By the time he leaves the studio for the day, turning over the writing to Haru, it’s five in the afternoon and he is _so_ ready to go see his favourite cashier. He strolls over to the Jasmine Dragon and pushes open the door without preamble, finding a mostly-empty shop. Zuko is, as always, working the counter.

“Zuko!” Sokka chirps, bouncing up to the counter. “How’s it going? Are you dead on your feet yet?”

“Hello to you too, dickface,” Zuko says, because he’s sweet like that. “Let me guess: mango milk tea with pomegranate pearls?”

“My oh my, you’re a man after my own heart,” Sokka sighs, pressing a hand to his forehead in a fake swoon like he actually knows what Zuko’s talking about. It’s become a routine of theirs: Sokka comes in, Zuko rattles off whatever weird order he’s come up with today like it’s Sokka’s regular daily drink, and then Zuko fucks off to go make whatever he wants and lets Sokka drink it free of charge. Sokka doesn’t know if Zuko’s allowed to just give out drinks to customers, but hey, he gets to drink tea with a cute boy for free. He’s not complaining.

Today’s drink is a pale orange monstrosity that tastes like sugar and nothing else. Sokka inhales it anyway, telling Zuko about everything and nothing. Zuko’s a good listener; he pulls a chair up by the counter and listens as Sokka rambles on about everything from the badgerfrog he’d seen on the sidewalk today to the latest drama at work (“That _asshole,”_ he says, when Sokka tells him about Jet being his newest colleague). In return, Sokka helps him close up shop when the clock hits seven—and _wow,_ he didn’t realise he’d been here for that long—and listens as Zuko rants about the lady who had ordered ginger tea ‘without the ginger’.

(“But that’s—”

“Impossible? _I know!”)_

Still, at the end of the day, Sokka does have a family to get back to. He flips the sign on the door to _closed_ as he leaves, waving at Zuko over his shoulder and starting the walk to the monorail station. Parting is such sweet sorrow, and all that.

When he’s a street away from the station, a sign catches his eye. It’s nothing special, just a bright white supermarket sign, something he’s passed a hundred times. But for some reason, he can’t help but slow down as he passes it.

He bites his lip. Katara’s birthday is coming up, and they usually just have a quiet little party at home, but…

But he _wants_ to do something nice for his baby sister. So yeah. Fuck it. He’s going to buy them some fancy Middle Ring food, and he’s going to cook them something nice. But not too nice, obviously, because then Katara will _definitely_ catch on and start going on about how it’s just her birthday and they really don’t need to do anything special.

(And fine, _maybe_ he wants to do something nice because of the fan weighing down his bag. _Maybe_ he wants to do something nice because he doesn’t know how much longer they’ve got left in Ba Sing Se, and he wants to make sure he can at least give his family this.)

He ducks into the supermarket. It’s a lot brighter than the ones in the Lower Ring. It’s also a lot bigger, and a lot cleaner, and a hell of a lot emptier.

Seriously. Apart from the bored-looking girl sitting at Counter 3, Sokka can’t see a single other person in this place. 

He meanders through the aisles. Even the packaged stuff looks fresher than the ones in the Lower Ring. He’s pretty sure he’d pass out if he ever saw Upper Ring food. 

He doesn’t get too many things, because he’s not crazy, but he does buy some better quality rice. Carrots, moon peaches—ooh, they even have canned sea prunes. He gets some cuts of frozen meat that _aren’t_ filled with bones, and, as a treat, he buys them chocolate, too.

He’s weighing a grapemelon and debating whether or not to buy it when he catches sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. Counter 3 Girl is snoring now, so he knows it’s not her. Whoever it is is standing in the same aisle as Sokka, eyeing up the lychee nuts, and Sokka’s too nosy to not look.

When he does, he breaks out into a grin. 

“Hey!” Sokka’s aware that he looks like an idiot, standing in the supermarket aisle with a grapemelon in hand, waving at Zuko from four metres away, but it’s not like there’s anyone else around to see him. “Hey, Zuko!”

Zuko looks up from the lychee nuts and meets Sokka’s eyes. The faintest smile quirks his lips, and Sokka grins even wider in response.

“Hey, Sokka,” Zuko says. Now that he’s out of his work uniform, Sokka can fully appreciate his outfit: dark red long-sleeved shirt, tight black pants, a black leather jacket thrown over his shoulders. It should be illegal to look that good under the shitty fluorescent supermarket lights. “Seen any more badgerfrogs?”

“Unfortunately, no. But!” Sokka holds up a finger. “I _did_ see a pygmy-puma territory fight.” 

Zuko raises his brow. “A pygmy-puma territory fight? Those happen?”

“Oh, yeah. I see them all the time in the Lower Ring.” Sokka stretches his arms over his head, carefully watching Zuko’s face for any changes. He knows some people can get weird about it when they find out he lives in the Lower Ring. To his relief, all Zuko does is inch his eyebrow a little higher.

“And how big do these territory fights get?” he prods. Sokka can’t tell if he’s genuinely curious or not, so he just shrugs.

“Eh, depends,” he says. “Now, real question here: should I or should I not get this grapemelon?”

“Oh, definitely not,” Zuko says, coming over from the lychee nuts to frown down at the melons. “The grapemelons here are shit. If you want _real_ produce, try the Farmers’ Market near Town Hall.”

“Noted,” Sokka says, setting the grapemelon back down with its fellows. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Zuko twist his hands together, almost like he’s—

Holy shit. Is Zuko _fidgeting?_ Is he nervous? Why would he be nervous?

Sokka’s brain short-circuits. What if Zuko’s about to _ask him out?_

He’s been flirting with Zuko for nearly three months now, and he _thinks_ Zuko’s been flirting back. He was planning to ask him out soon anyway. But if _Zuko_ asks him out, well...Sokka really isn’t opposed.

“Uh, weird question,” Zuko starts, and Sokka’s heart does a freaking triple axel, “but do you want to join the rebellion?”

Does he _what now?_

The entire gods-damned world grinds to a halt. Sokka freezes in his tracks and stares at Zuko disbelievingly, because there are _so_ many things to unpack there. Like, for instance, the fact that Zuko is apparently in the rebellion. And that he’s just asked Sokka to join the rebellion. Out loud. _In public._

“What the fuck,” Sokka says. His voice comes out strangled and hoarse. “Zuko, you can’t—you can’t just _say that_ — _”_

“Sure I can.” Zuko cocks his brow. “Want me to do it again?”

 _“No!”_ Sokka whisper-shrieks, diving forward to slap his hand over Zuko’s mouth. His heart’s moved on from triple axels to just straight up marathoning. “Are you crazy? Are you _actually fucking crazy?”_

Zuko squirms and wriggles, bringing his hand up to grab hold of Sokka’s wrist and wrench his hand away. “What, so you’re going to tell me that that _isn’t_ one of Suki’s fans?” he drawls, nodding down at Sokka’s bag. It takes a few seconds for Sokka to recover from the revelation that _Zuko knows Suki,_ but then he’s glancing down to find that—shit, he’s stupid. The metal edge of Suki’s fan is poking out in the open for anyone to see, and if a Dai Li agent’s seen it then _holy fuck he’s dead_ —

“Hey. Look at me.” Zuko snaps his fingers, and Sokka jerks back to reality. “I’m just offering. Now I know you’re friends with Suki, and I know that you’re a refugee, and I know that Suki knows that refugees aren’t exactly welcome in this city right now. That’s all it is: an offer. Turn it down if you want to.”

Gods, a Middle Ring supermarket is _not_ the right place to be having this conversation. Sokka steps back, scrubbing one hand over his face. His heart’s going so fast he swears his ribs are about to shatter like glass.

So here’s the thing. He _wants_ to join the rebellion. He wanted to join way back when Suki did, but that was right after Dad went missing, and he’d been so scared that Suki would go missing too. And if he joined the rebellion, what if _he_ went missing? Then what would happen to Katara and Toph and Aang? 

But now—if he _does_ join the rebellion, then what does he have to lose? They’re already walking on a knife’s edge, what with the Dai Li apparently about to start evicting refugees left and right. If he joins the rebellion, he might actually be able to do something about it, other than packing a duffel bag full of clothes and shoving it in his closet.

Zuko’s watching him from an arms’ breadth away. Sokka inhales, exhales, and holds out his hand.

“Give me your number,” he says brusquely. “I’ll—think about it. I’ll think about it when I’m not, y’know, _here.”_ He gestures around them, at the (admittedly empty) supermarket. 

Zuko shrugs. He pulls out a pen from his jacket pocket (which is _weird,_ who the hell carries pens in their pockets?) and grabs a plastic bag of lychee nuts, scribbling a series of numbers on the packaging. He holds it out, and Sokka stares at the phone number scrawled over the brand name.

“Writing on something you haven’t even bought yet?” He clicks his tongue and takes the bag. “That feels illegal.”

Zuko barks out a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about breaking the law,” he says, with a pointed glance at Suki’s fan. Sokka surreptitiously pushes the fan down with his foot, hiding it from view.

“Oh, you know me,” Sokka says breezily. “I’m a morally upstanding, law-abiding citizen, as strait-laced as they come. Crime? Never heard of her.” As he talks, he peels the barcode off the lychee nut bag. Hey, lychee nuts are a rarity for him, and if he’s going to walk out of this store with a whole bag of them then he sure as hell isn’t going to pay for it. 

Zuko shakes his head, but he’s smiling. It’s soft and bright and _oh,_ yeah, Sokka has a crush on this guy. He fumbles the lychee nuts a little as he drops them into his bag, and Zuko does this tiny little laugh that absolutely melts his heart.

Maybe he _should_ ask Zuko out. He stares at the lapel of Zuko’s leather jacket, trying to work up the courage to say it, when—

His phone buzzes with a notification. Sokka curses under his breath and pulls it out of his pocket, finding the screen lit up with a text.

Message from: Katkat

_[Where are you?]_

_[Suki said you promised to be home by 9.]_

Sokka checks his watch and swears. It’s 9:15 which means it’s going to be at _least_ 9:45 by the time he gets home. He sends off a quick response to Katara, just to make sure she doesn’t end up burning down the city to find him.

Message to: Katkat

_[just picking up some groceries]_

_[be home asap]_

He sighs and pockets his phone, glancing up at Zuko. Whatever moment was there before Katara interrupted, it’s gone now. Oh, well. He’ll have to wait for another time to ask Zuko out.

“Need to go?” Zuko asks. Is Sokka’s disappointment really that obvious?

He pulls a face. “Yeah. My sister’s getting worried.” He raises one shoulder in a _what can you do?_ gesture. An expression that he can’t read flits across Zuko’s face, there and gone again in an instant.

“Yeah. Sisters.” Zuko coughs and looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. “See you tomorrow?”

Sokka grins and finger-guns at him, like an _idiot,_ dear gods, what is he _doing?_ “See you tomorrow,” he echoes, and if his voice cracks a little at the end—well, that’s for no one but him and Zuko to know.

* * *

On the monorail home, he saves Zuko’s number in his phone under _my favourite cashier._ He opens up a chat between them and stares at the screen for what feels like a solid hour, nearly missing his stop.

Does he want to join the rebellion? If he’s being honest with himself, then—yes. Yes, he does. He’s sick of doing nothing while his scripts are scribbled out and the war is hushed up. But it's risky, and there are _consequences,_ damn it, and—and—

His phone pings with a text from Suki.

Message from: kickass

_[Than and Ying got evicted.]_

Shit. Than and Ying—they _know_ Than and Ying. Than and Ying live barely two streets away from them. Hell, Katara babysits for them sometimes. If they got evicted...gods, Sokka hopes they’ll be okay.

To actually _know_ someone who’s been evicted makes the danger feel that much more real. Suddenly, the Middle Ring food he’d bought feels a thousand times heavier.

By the time he reaches the apartment, he’s made up his mind.

* * *

Message to: my favourite cashier

_[Hey. It’s Sokka.]_

_[I want in.]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, bolting upright in bed at two in the morning: what if i wrote a zukka dystopia au
> 
> also me, who has exams in two weeks: what if you don't
> 
> clearly, you can see which side won, because here lies the incredibly messy first chapter of a zukka dystopia au. let this be a testament to my bad life choices, i guess. and thank you for giving this story a chance!


End file.
